Helberg makes it to Carnegie Hall with Florence

Simon Helberg (left) stars as real-life pianist Cosme McMoon alongside Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep in Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins, a comedy about a real-life New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite her terrible singing voice.
Simon Helberg (left) stars as real-life pianist Cosme McMoon alongside Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep in Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins, a comedy about a real-life New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite her terrible singing voice.

Being a featured player on one of the more popular TV comedies of the last decade can be a decidedly mixed blessing for an actor: On the one hand, you've made your fame and fortune and, through the magic of syndication, you will be getting handsomely paid for years to come, long after the show is finally retired; on the other, you run the risk of forever being pigeon-holed by that single role (just ask Michael Richards), and won't get as much of a chance to spread your wings as some of your lesser-known colleagues.

This is the conundrum for Simon Helberg, the young actor who plays the would-be lady-killer Howard Wolowitz on the endlessly popular CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Fortunately, though, he also grew up displaying some musical talent on the piano, which turns out to have come in remarkably handy in his new role. He plays the real-life pianist Cosme McMoon, who back in the 1940s served as the accompanist to the venerable Florence Foster Jenkins, played in the film of the same name by Meryl Streep. Jenkins was a very wealthy heiress and a serious music lover. Egged on by her well-meaning husband (played by Hugh Grant), and many of the top vocal coaches of the era, Jenkins believed her horrific warbles to be brilliant vocalizing, so much so that in 1944, she put on a concert for herself -- at Carnegie Hall, much to Cosme's dismay. The young actor spoke with us about working with Streep, the nature of the art, and the difficulty in playing music with someone who is deliberately hitting all the wrong notes.

Q. So how much did actually being able to play piano help you get the role?

A. I told [director Stephen Frears] that I could play, and he just kept hammering away at "can you play anything? How well? Can you act and play at the same time?" By the end, I really just sort of lied and said, "Of course, I'm classically trained, and I'll play anything you throw in front of me." That wasn't true. I really was just trying to say I can probably play some of these things, but I usually played a different genre of music than classical opera, but I at least could put my hands in the right place.

Q. Were you still confident in your musical abilities?

A. I never felt totally comfortable, which is good for the character I guess, but I mean, music is not really my forte, especially anymore. Until I was 16 I felt much more comfortable and played so much, but I played jazz and in rock bands. I did that kind of music, so to have a repertoire of classical music and opera, and then to have to accompany, which is its own set of skills aside from just playing. It's really kind of knowing it like backwards and forwards where you're able to adapt with the singer: It's not just sitting with a metronome. Then it's Meryl Streep, and then it's Stephen Frears saying, "Hey, you know what? We'll shoot all the music live. You'll wear an ear piece." There's that, so there was so many elements that were in no way reassuring or comforting to me ever. It was a recipe for just, you know, a panic attack, but it kind of fed into the dynamic.

Q. It must have been difficult to play music with someone deliberately singing as poorly as possible.

A. Yeah. It's very hard to do something badly, I think, if you can do it. Even for an actor, it's like you see someone who is supposed to shoot a basketball, and it looks fake. If you have to miss the shot, it's hard. For me, it's easy to miss the shot, but [Meryl Streep] had to learn all of these pieces of the hardest coloratura and then sing them. She had to know where the right notes were to basically hit the wrong notes. She had to kind of do two things, and to sing in multiple languages. For me, it was learning the pieces well enough to be able to kind of bob and weave with her, which helped. That was our dynamic, we started with rehearsing the music, so we developed this natural kind of intimacy, which is something you see in the movie.

Q. For an actor, I can only imagine getting to work with Meryl Streep was a dream come true. Were there things that surprised you about her methodology, or was working with her what you expected?

A. It was sort of simultaneously both. It was like constantly surprising and then constantly the feeling of oh, of course. She couldn't do what she does if she wasn't as thoughtful and sensitive and collaborative and humble. I'm sure there's a lot of jerks out there that are great at what they do, and that's fine. I just don't think you could put the kind of human beings on screen that she does, that she's able to do, without a sensitivity and an awareness of people, and so that was, once again, sort of surprising and also completely obvious. It was fortunate that I got to lean on her because she makes everybody better.

She's an anomaly. She cares. She's so focused and so aware of the story being told from every perspective, but she's not controlling and she's not trying to do anyone else's job. She's not trying to tell anyone or direct the movie or write the movie. She's just trying to tell the story.

Q. So there's that moment with your character when he realizes he will get to play Carnegie Hall, but only in support of this woman who he knows is absolutely dreadful at singing. It's like the actor's dilemma: Is it better to be famous for something you don't feel proud of, or mostly unknown but having worked on projects you really cared about.

A. I think that you hope to hold on to your integrity, I guess. If you feel comfortable doing something that might be considered selling out, but it's something you believe in, I think it depends on what your integrity kind of dictates. In that moment, I think you're watching Cosme struggle with integrity, but I think the decision really is actually about whether his love for her actually will overpower his insecurity. I think the decision is, "I love this person, but this could really hurt my career, and I love my passion too. Is there a way to reconcile those two?"

Q. Florence Foster Jenkins was the subject of absolute withering ridicule; if this was in the era of social media, her stuff would have gone viral all over the world. Yet, there's still something very courageous and admirable about her attitude. People love laughing at the would-be singers on American Idol who are awful, but I think there can be something truly commendable there as well.

A. I think we root for these people, even in American Idol. I definitely think that show is designed to exploit and ultimately to laugh at them. It's certainly constructed that way, but I think there's a small part of us, when they walk in the room, you're rooting for them. The difference between something like that too, is she aimed so high. She went to Carnegie Hall. That's big, and she sang the hardest pieces of opera in the canon. To watch someone have such a great aspiration and then to fail, to quote the Susan Sontag essay, "there is a success in passionate failures."

MovieStyle on 08/26/2016

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